Year: 2017

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Packing Nines…

  By All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

…Like September

If you selected a 9 for the most recent GAP panel, you believe that this paragraph describes you:

The strongest readers, thinkers, and communicators, these students also evince the best kind of collegiality, the most authentic curiosity, and the most mature amenability. They are exemplary autodidacts, utilizing inquiry-based tools and structures to improve purposefully in skills and knowledge. They demonstrate a precocious strength in metacognition and are consistently, insightfully reflective.

That’s impressive! More than 40 of you, from sophomores to seniors, have said that you were one of the strongest readers, thinkers, and communicators throughout the three-week period that ended on May 19. Another two dozen of you selected an 8, which means you are right there next to the 9s in terms of exceptional work:

These students are highly skilled communicators, critical thinkers, and close readers; they lack only the exceptional maturity and depth of students earning a 9. An 8 reflects a systemic investment in the course and a desire to do more than just what is required. These students are also collegial, curious, and amenable in ways that galvanize their peers and demonstrably improve the learning environment.

That’s also impressive! Because of your systemic investment, I’m here to ask you all to hold a conversation with me in the comment section of this post. This particular inquiry-based tool — direct access to the teacher, independent of class time, through Sisyphean High — has been underutilized all year. It’s one of the “inquiry-based tools and structures” referenced in the profile of a 9, though, and a chance for you to do “more than just what is required,” which is part of the profile of an 8.

The topic of our discussion is this post on in-class focus, feedback, and unlocking the course. As a self-described 8 or 9, you have no doubt read that post already, especially with a response deadline of tomorrow. Look at the notes you’ve already taken on that post, and consider the assignment in front of you. Speak specifically to your own experience unlocking that individualized curriculum. What does your classroom and course look like? How are you balancing the requirement that you “demonstrably improve the learning environment” with the constant metacognition and reflection necessary to individualize the work? What questions did that post raise for you, and what do you think it changes about the last few weeks of the year?

A Box of Positives

Understand that this is a genuine invitation to discussion. This post is now a forum for your insights and ideas, because any student whose body of work truly fits an 8 or a 9 has earned that level of respect. As your teacher, I benefit from hearing more about how you earned that 8 or 9. This is also an opportunity for me to share my observations directly with you in a way that can instruct others.

Of course, this post and assignment are also, without malice or irony, intended to burst down any inflated self-assessments. If you try to wade into this conversation without having done what it takes to earn an 8 or 9, it’ll be obvious to anyone who has done the work. Your actual GAP scores, based on the evidence you generated, will be posted very soon, with the final scores of the year coming in less than three weeks; it will be much better to realize any errors before then, and definitely before you begin animatedly discussing the “evidence” that makes you one of the strongest readers, thinkers, and writers in the building.

To put it more bluntly, there will be two types of students who misidentified their profiles as an 8 or a 9:

  1. The group that reads this post (and the previous one), recognizes the self-assessment error, and changes it. This group will move toward an 8 or 9 just by demonstrating amenability, self-awareness, and integrity.
  2. The group that doesn’t even read this post, because their sense of what an “8” or “9” entails is deeply flawed.

Group #2 isn’t likely to join us here, nor are they likely to have read the post on in-class focus and feedback. Those lapses are further evidence of a lower-tier profile. I mention them to you, the true 8s and 9s, because that is another possible focus for our discussion here. What do you do about peers who haven’t invested enough time or energy into the course to know that they aren’t really an 8 or a 9? What do you think the system should do? Do you experience fremdschämen when you see these other students? Is it closer to frustration?

Try to stay positive as you start the discussion, whether or not we delve into the Dunning-Kruger effect, the fragility of some egos, and the frustration of watching students “cheat” this system. Criticism can be constructive; cynicism almost never is. I invite you to start with the good stuff: how you’re individualizing your learning, how you’re creating meaning, how you’re growing as a thinker/reader/writer, and so on.

Keep your comments succinct, too. This isn’t an invitation to write essays on your experience; it’s a chance to move the best kind of discussion to a forum online. You’re here to learn from others, which takes active listening, whether we’re commenting or circled up in class.

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In-Class Focus and Feedback

  By All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

Shrapnel

The focuses of this instructional post are in-class focus and feedback. The impetus is that many of you are straying from the path. You’re making poor decisions — wasting class time and ignoring instruction, for the most part.

There’s something there that should scare you. I’ll tell you what it’s not.

It’s not what happens when you ignore instruction. What you’re doing is insubordinate and disrespectful and breaking all kinds of rules, and our classroom can only tolerate that for so long. Then you face some kind of punishment. Parents are called, Guidance meetings are arranged, etc. But that should embarrass you, not scare you.

It’s not your grade. As the rest of this post will explain, for those of you able to read it, GAP scores suffer when there isn’t evidence of in-class focus and feedback. The margin for error is less these days, too. But that’s obvious. It shouldn’t scare you.

It’s not even what bad decisions truly do to you. You are, right now, becoming a permanent version of yourself, and that self, for some of you, is going to be uninteresting, unskilled, and undisciplined. Believing otherwise is the “grain through the body of a bird” error explained five or six years ago in the first guide to this stuff. But that is more depressing than it is scary.

What you ought to fear is missing out. Everyone who invests in this course and its philosophy, who works hard and pays careful attention, unlocks something special. In essence, there are two courses taught in Room 210. The first one exists to force you to do your work, pay attention, and develop basic skills and traits. It attempts to make you a half-decent citizen of the world. It’ll cover a few ELA staples, get you ready for any exams, and help you feel less stressed about grades.

The second course exists to transform you. Its students are smarter, more interesting, and more engaged. On their worst days, they have a space that understands and supports them. On their best days, they find freedom and inspiration.

Yes, you should be afraid of low grades, making disrespect a habit, upsetting the teacher enough that he decapitates you in the middle of class1. But you should be existentially terrified that you’ve wasted such an opportunity. And to be in a room with people who have unlocked that deeper level is a constant reminder that you could have done it, too. You could have the freedom to become a better person, to study what you want, to do what you want — and you’re wasting it so you can scroll through Instagram or play a video game2.

The Keys to Life vs. 15 Minutes of Fame

To figure out your GAP score, you only need the profiles, probably with the tiered annotations attached. You could use the expanded protocol, which is plenty effective, or the embedded content in that triptych post. But the original set of profiles and scores is enough.

Past the profiles, the GAP Google Forms you complete require you to assign a number only to in-class focus and feedback3. Those really are the two most important elements, even before you get to the profiles themselves. That’s why this most recent tool ought to help even the most disengaged of you sort out your profile:

[sz-drive-embed type=”document” id=”1PorDAGF_4NWhCDlU1Upq2lhC8S3ypVkyFl9EDfGSnnI” width=”auto” height=”auto” /]

If the embedded version glitches out or isn’t accessible where you are, use the copies in our classroom, or load a copy of the handout through Google Drive by clicking here:

Starting at the top of that handout, you see again these two most basic requirements of this course, which are also the two keys that unlock upper-tier success:

  1. You must make the most of the class period.
  2. You must invest in feedback.

Feedback was the focus of this recent essay/post, which clarifies a lot of long-standing ideas, and we’ve stressed the importance of our time together during the school day since the start of the school year — see this essay or this one for a reminder.

Part 1 of the new handout (“The Keys”) asks you to self-assess your in-class focus and the level of feedback you’ve generated. Again, it’s an iteration of what you see in the Google Form you complete every three weeks or so. Depending on your browser, the graphics may not translate into what was originally intended. The line of emojis should look like this:

In other browsers, the faces may look like this:

This will seem unimportant at first, but there’s a reason to use faces instead of numbers. It’s about relative self-assessment. In our case, there are two perspectives. The first is the imagined perspective of an objective observer. What would someone notice about your in-class focus and feedback over the course of several weeks? That observer doesn’t care about why you were playing video games or mindlessly reloading Snapchat; he just makes a note that you were.

The second perspective is relative, and it’s inspired a bit by the Wong-Baker pain scale:

Ah, #8, my old friend.

There is a lot of subjectivity in this sort of self-assessment. What you consider to be a 10 — the worst pain you’ve ever experienced — might be only a 4 or 6 for a much less fortunate person. It’s still a 10 for you, though, because you can only base it on your experience. That’s the second perspective in our classroom: To a small extent, your best version of focusing might be different from that of others, and we might adjust — to a small extent — the standards to which you are held. You might be capable only of a certain level of feedback. That’s okay, if it’s true.

Again, the first perspective on your body of work is ultimately more important: What would an objective observer write down, if he was asked to describe your habits and behavioral patterns? We aren’t always after the reasons you were compelled to play on your phone for 35 minutes while your practice Regents Exam gathered dust in front of you. We can’t always take into consideration why you were playing video games instead of workshopping an essay. And, in fact, advocacy is such an integral part of the course that if you did need to space out for 35 minutes, you could probably ask for that, reflect on it later, and end up learning quite a bit about yourself4.

Part 2 of the handout (“The Engine”) clarifies these two perspectives through some close reading. The selections you see come from grade abatement profiles of 2, 4, 6, and 8, which give us final scores of 60, 70, 85, and 95, respectively. By any heuristic, these are the profiles that serve as benchmarks for failure and success. These small excerpts should help you arrive at a more accurate and helpful GAP score.

GAP 2 | A 2 {may indicate} [a deliberate and systemic disengagement]…

This is a question of repeated, conscious choice. How many times does a student need to disengage, miss work, lose focus, etc, before it is “deliberate and systemic”? How many mistakes are permissible? No one expects perfection, even at the level of a 9, but we have to start the discussion with some sort of threshold. You have agency and self-control, and very few students goof off out of malice. You do it without thinking. At a certain point, however, a lack of adjustment or a lack of thinking is a choice.

GAP 4 | These students {do not meet} [the basic requirements of the course]…

The GAP 2 has modal language, which is language suggesting possibility. The student “may” meet those criteria, but there are other ways to slip to that tier. For a GAP 4 and its surrounding scores, the language is direct: If you do not meet the basic requirements of the course, you really shouldn’t be scored any higher than a 4 (70).

The question, then, is what the course defines as its basic requirements. Right now, as always, the course values in-class focus and student-driven feedback more than anything else. This new handout also lists the obvious stuff, like getting work in on time and being amenable to redirection, as basic requirements. As the handout says, it’s about doing the job on the days you would rather be watching Netflix, instead of, you know, actually watching Netflix in class5.

So the question is, again, how lenient we ought to be. Where is the line between human error and apathy or indulgence? It isn’t a hypothetical question. Look at these data from around 9:00 AM on 5/17:

Those are the self-reported scores from about a dozen students. See how high the scores are? Maybe you can spot the issue when you read the original directions from the Google Classroom assignment:

That clearly states that completing the form before May 19 will lower your profile score. So about a dozen students, some of them otherwise excellent, didn’t read the directions before jumping in. They also didn’t read the calendar, and they seem to have forgotten that we never do these forms ahead of the last day of the three-week period. Yet they self-reported scores in Tier 4. Should those students receive lower GAP scores? Do we shrug away their mistake, even though it’s mid-May? Where do we draw the line?

And that’s an innocuous example.

GAP 6 | Students earning a 6 {are consistent and reliable} [in performance]…

My theory is that you consider “performance” to be only a particular set of things you do in school. Tests are performances. Essays are performances. Exams are definitely performances. The formative steps aren’t performative in the same way, so you cut corners and cheat the system if/when you need to. You copy homework, use Schmoop before a class discussion, and zone out during lectures.

This course rests on the opposite principle: The process is what matters, and the products should never be the primary focus of our learning. That means that “consistent and reliable” work happens every day. You saw the importance of that philosophy in the article we read about preschool crafts, but it’s written about and discussed constantly:

View at Medium.com

GAP 8 | An 8 {reflects} [a systemic investment in the course]…

In many of our notes on a GAP 8, we’ve talked about “galvanize” as the key verb. It’s true that you ought to be collaborating more here, and you ought to be using the interstitial mechanisms more to help your peers; the most important verb might be “reflects,” however, because of what it does for us metaphorically.

The rest of the time, you’re looking at quantifiable stuff. You can count the number of minutes you’re off-task when determining that a GAP 4 is your fate. If you believe you’ve been “consistent and reliable,” you can add up the assignments you’ve handed in, collate the formative and process-based work you did, and stack up your feedback-driven metacognition. When you invest in the entire system, however, your evidence moves beyond the quantifiable and into something more reflective.

Which is not to get too existential6. Think about how else we use “reflect” in here: It’s the other part of the self-monitoring you do, alongside metacognitive writing and discussion. You reflect your investment through self-monitoring. Once you observe the true purpose of the work, you can set the course accordingly. You’re in control of the learning, because you are involved in all parts of the system — not just the daily class periods and formal writing assignments, but everything.

Which is why Part 3 of this new handout, “The Vehicle,” is a list of the universal skills and traits we value. They are streamlined and edited a bit, but they haven’t changed fundamentally from the beginning of the year. When you are invested enough, your focus is on honing these skills, and you will see them reflected in everything you do.

That’s why it matters less which books we read, which essays you write, and which discussions we have. We do what we have to do in those regards, from Regents Exam prep to school-wide summer reading. The goal is for you to memorize this list of skills and traits, and then for us to work together to determine what you need to do to hone your strengths and eliminate your weaknesses. This becomes the blueprint for your growth:

Reflections

At this point, your brain should be churning as it begins to process this. You may need to revisit and edit your most recent GAP score. You may need to ask questions in the comment section below7. Regardless, you absolutely must write something in response to all this feedback — not just because that is a formal assignment, but because it’s the whole point.

First, I want to add that I still believe that it is nearly impossible to fake in-class focus and feedback. You can fake a certain level of curiosity and empathy, but it’s nearly impossible to reframe a period spent off-task as anything but what it was. You can rush through a few pages of perfunctory reflection, but it’s nearly impossible to turn a real lack of feedback and investment into something else.

Since “nearly” impossible is not the same as “totally” impossible, I usually try to pitch faking it in here as a good idea, theoretically speaking. That was the theory as early on as the tenth section of this essay:

If you force yourself through the motions in here, those motions will inculcate the skills and traits we want. A misanthrope who forces himself to take collegial and galvanizing actions will incrementally learn empathy. A narcissist who forces herself to reflect and metacogitate every week will incrementally find new self-awareness and insight. An apathetic student who grinds through assignments just to get them done will incrementally gain a real appreciation for the value of the work.

That’s idealistic, but it seems to be true for most students: If you fake it, at least you’re doing some good.

I think there’s something else to add, though: If you decided that this “nearly impossible” claim was a challenge, you might figure out how to fake it. You might fool me. Or you might just slip through the cracks, earning credit when credit is definitely not due. Then the hard-working students become frustrated, seeing a kind of injustice. No one wants to feel cheated, to have a peer succeed dishonestly, or to see a good system subverted.

So here’s the thing: Did that person succeed? Did he really? When a student “cheats” in here, all he’s done is get worse at everything that the world actually values. That vehicle for learning — the list of universal skills and traits — might as well be a car rusting on cinder blocks in the front yard. The student, having gotten away with wasting class time and ignoring feedback, has made himself more distracted and more disrespectful. He knows less now and can do less with the little he knows than his peers. He’s grown dishonest and cynical and selfish.

That’s… not really a victory. How do you imagine you would celebrate that? “Boy, I tricked him! I’m a terrible student! My life is going to be much harder now!”

I mean, yes, I’m upset about that, but not in a mustache-twirling kind of way8. I would like the world to be filled with respectful, creative people who take advantage of extraordinary opportunities to learn about themselves and the world around them. I hope you will make that world a better place through your intelligence and compassion. I believe in your potential, and I hate to see it wasted.

That’s all.

  1. “Metaphorically!” he shouted quickly, glancing at administration and laughing nervously. “Metaphorically decapitates you in the middle of class.” ↩

  2. Both of which you could legitimately do, if it was part of a unit of study you’d designed. You could write about these things, study them, read excellent ETA essays on them. You’d get more out of it. Why not do that? ↩

  3. You are also asked about your confidence and certainty versus our collective Dunning-Kruger tendencies, but that’s for another lesson. ↩

  4. The best kind of metacognition is uncomfortable, so this would be perfect: Why do you need to waste class time? Is it really that you’re wasting it, or is something more significant going on? ↩

  5. Again, you could probably write and read about this, if you were invested enough in the course. Binge-watching culture is fascinating, and I’d want to help you unpack the reasons why that show had so transfixed you that it couldn’t wait another few hours. ↩

  6. Says the Camus-inspired website that just pitched Regents Exam prep with a Kafka reference. ↩

  7. Try that out. Scroll down and ask a question. It’s never too late to engage with the interstitial elements of the course, and it is the easiest and fastest way to get feedback. ↩

  8. Although I wonder… In that scenario, who is Dudley Do-Right? ↩

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Lights and Tunnels: RE11, Part 2

  By English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

Part 2 of a two-part series that probably isn’t going to be renewed for another season. Advertisers are pulling out.

Regents and Final Exam Work

As discussed in the last post, the final exam will be given only to students in danger of failing the course. If you are one of those students, you will know by the end of this week, and you will be given the final exam prompt on Monday, May 22.

If you have kept up with assignments over the last few weeks, you have a completed, annotated, and deconstructed practice Regents Exam in a folder in Room 210. If your folder is incomplete, that’s your focus until it is complete. Grade abatement will take the missing deadlines into account, but you should worry more about the exam on June 14. We will return to these folders in June, when we’ll need to review and arrange your mental architecture for the exam itself; and while it might not be the entrance exam at Oxford, the Regents needs to be taken seriously. The exhaustive context and directions remain where they have been.

The folders will be reviewed for any serious areas of weakness, and then I’ll talk to you individually and in small groups about what you might need to do before June. All of you will be practicing multiple-choice questions on poetry, however, which is why that gets its own section here:

How to Strip Poetry of All Its Beauty

Well, not all its beauty. We’re not quite at what David Foster Wallace called “the literary equivalent of tearing the petals off and grinding them up and running the goo through a spectrometer to explain why a rose smells so pretty,” although that may be simply because the Regents isn’t precise enough a tool.

Regardless, the data from our first batch of multiple-choice questions suggest that you need help analyzing poetry. The data always suggest that. Perhaps that’s because you shouldn’t analyze poetry unless you plan to emulate it — to become a poet yourself, that is. I’ve tried to parse the logic that gets us anywhere else:

View at Medium.com

Whether or not multiple-choice questions on a timed, state-designed test are authentic or valid, however, or helpful in any meaningful way, you have to get them right. So we will practice.

You’ll get a packet of poetry and multiple-choice questions at some point this week, after you’ve had a day or two to look over recent assignments and metabolize that post-prom letdown1. You’ll have time to answer those questions and talk about the poetry, and then I’ll post a Google Form to give you the right answers and generate group data, just like we’ve done before.

Other Work

We’ll continue our Pareto Project work on Fridays in the iLC. I’ll use the data from this form, which has been formally posted to Google Classroom and embedded in an earlier post, to determine what happens next, and that will dictate some of our time together before the end of the year.

Otherwise, what we’ll do is true makerspace work: work that is generated in the moment through questioning and observation and curiosity. I’ll push you to write certain essays and read certain texts. It will be very much about exploration, creation, and the learning that goes with it. So the work won’t have a post here online, nor a Google Classroom assignment. It will be work that is folded into the grade abatement process and made authentic by the understandings we’ve developed over the year.

In other words, when we aren’t grappling with tests and their interior logic, we’ll be seeing what sort of happiness we can carve out of the rock in front of us.

  1. Even if you didn’t attend the junior prom, there’s a post-prom letdown. When the mob that surrounds you feels one way, it tends to put something in the water. ↩

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Lights and Tunnels: AP11, Part 2

  By AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017)

Part 2 of a two-part series that probably isn’t going to be renewed for another season. Too much stunt casting, the critics say.

AP Post-Exam Work

Now that you’ve had a weekend to decompress from the hadal pressure of AP exams, you might want to head over to Google Classroom and complete the reflective/metacognitive document prepared for you. When you open the assignment, you’ll get a file with your name automatically added. You’ll see boxes that will expand as you write in them, and you’ll intuit from the first part of this sentence that you should write enough to cause them to expand.

Your prompt: Write about each of those elements of the exam. In your writing, say something insightful and meaningful and worth the effort of pulling it out of your mind and making it permanent.

Now, in the first paragraph there, I’ve said that you might want to head over there to reflect/metacogitate1 on the exam, because this assignment isn’t “required.” And that word is in quotation marks to draw your attention back to the language of the upper-tier profiles. This post-exam work is the “more than just what is required” in the GAP 8. Failing to write something meaningful here doesn’t necessarily keep you from that GAP 8 or 9, and there may be a reason that you can’t fit this kind of writing into your week. See what you can do, though.

Regents and Final Exam Work

As discussed in the last post, the final exam will be given only to students in danger of failing the course. If you are one of those students, you will know by the end of this week, and you will be given the final exam prompt on Monday, May 22.

As for the Regents Exam: The exhaustive context and directions remain where they have been, and you should know exactly what goes in your manilla folder. We will return to these folders in June, when we’ll need to review and arrange your mental architecture for the exam itself. While it might not be the entrance exam at Oxford, the Regents needs to be taken seriously, especially by AP students.

Even before your folders are submitted for review, I’ll talk to you about serious areas of weakness. I’ll also probably ask you to do the poetry prep that the RE11 students are doing. I wouldn’t want you to miss out on this, which is the subheading for this part of the Regents Exam:

HOW TO STRIP POETRY OF ALL ITS BEAUTY

Well, not all its beauty. We’re not quite at what David Foster Wallace called “the literary equivalent of tearing the petals off and grinding them up and running the goo through a spectrometer to explain why a rose smells so pretty,” although that may be simply because the Regents isn’t precise enough a tool.

Regardless, the data always suggest that you struggle with multiple-choice questions on poetry. Perhaps that’s because you shouldn’t analyze poetry unless you plan to emulate it — to become a poet yourself, that is. I’ve tried to parse the logic that gets us anywhere else:

View at Medium.com

But we will practice, in all likelihood. There will be a packet of poetry and multiple-choice questions at some point, and you’ll have time to answer those questions and talk about the poetry, and then I’ll post a Google Form to give you the right answers and generate group data, just like we’ve done before.

Other Work

We’ll continue our Pareto Project work on Fridays in the iLC. I’ll use the data from this form, which has been formally posted to Google Classroom and embedded in an earlier post, to determine what happens next, and that will dictate some of our time together before the end of the year.

Otherwise, what we’ll do is true makerspace work: work that is generated in the moment through questioning and observation and curiosity. I’ll push you to write certain essays and read certain texts. It will be very much about exploration, creation, and the learning that goes with it. So the work won’t have a post here online, nor a Google Classroom assignment. It will be work that is folded into the grade abatement process and made authentic by the understandings we’ve developed over the year.

In other words, when we aren’t grappling with tests and their interior logic, we’ll be seeing what sort of happiness we can carve out of the rock in front of us. You are expected not just to understand all that metaphorical talk, but to know how to put it into practice. That is the real test at the end of the year: Do you know what we’re really trying to do in this course? Can you do it?

  1. A verb that will never not seem ridiculous. ↩

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Lights and Tunnels: RE10, Part 2

  By English 10 Regents (2016-2017)

Part 2 of a two-part series that probably isn’t going to be renewed for another season. Low ratings, naturally.

RE10 Final Exam Work

The final exam for this course will be given on Monday, June 19, at 8AM. (You can see the rest of the final exam schedule by clicking here.) It is a two-hour exam. Room assignments will be made closer to the exam date; we will post locations in class and on Google Classroom as soon as they’re available. The exam itself will have two parts: timed multiple-choice questions and a timed essay.

Each of the subsections below is a required assignment that will prepare you for the exam. We will also tie that test-centered work to metacognition, collaboration, organization, and most other GAP skills and traits. You will need to read directions closely, work steadily, and ask questions as you go. Your final two GAP scores depend on this work, as does your final exam score.

When you practice, you will need to take Part 1 silently and individually, using your computer only to enter your answers when you get to the step that requires Google Forms. We have to invoke the cemetery rows of traditional testing in order to get the most accurate data.

You will also need to take Part 2 silently and individually, writing by hand first, and then using your computer only as necessary to access backup copies of materials, including any required GARAS lessons. Note that these GARAS lessons are hyperlinked below, but the link goes to a scanned copy of the textbook; the printed, collated packet is much easier to use, so you will be asked to work offline whenever possible.

This instructional post is a checklist, too, when it is printed. Each of the Unicode boxes next to a bolded term or phrase is meant to be checked off as you complete a section of the exam prep. Monitor Google Classroom for deadlines and submission requirements.

☐ Part 1: August ’14

This is the multiple-choice section of the August ’14 ELA Regents Exam. There are three passages and 24 multiple-choice questions. Here is the section in full, followed by the required steps you must take:

 

☐ Practice the Multiple-Choice

  1. Read and annotate ☐ Passage A.
  2. Answer the multiple-choice questions for ☐ Passage A, circling your answer in the exam packet.
  3. Repeat Steps 1-2 for ☐ Passage B and ☐ Passage C.
  4. Enter your answers for all 24 questions in the Google Form below.

☐ Complete the Google Form

☐ Complete the Metacognition

  1. Get the correct answers for all 24 questions from the Google Form.
  2. For ☐ Passage A, write a metacognitive breakdown of your work, including both correct and incorrect answers.
  3. Work with peers and your teachers to ☐ develop that metacognitive breakdown into an understanding of your strengths and weaknesses on this type of passage.
  4. Repeat Step 2-3 for ☐ Passage B and ☐ Passage C.
☐ Part 2: August ’14

This is the source-based argument prompt from the August ’14 ELA Regents Exam. Here is the section in full, followed by the required steps you must take:

 

☐ Practice the Source-Based Essay

  1. Read and annotate the ☐ Directions, ☐ Topic, ☐ Task, and ☐ Guidelines.
  2. Read and annotate each of the four sources: ☐ Text 1, ☐ Text 2, ☐ Text 3, and ☐ Text 4.
  3. Write an ☐ essay response to this prompt in the provided Regents booklet.

☐ Copy the Exemplar Essay

  1. Read and annotate the ☐ rubric for Part 2, which can be downloaded by clicking here.
  2. Copy by hand the entirety of ☐ Anchor Paper – Part 2 – Level 6 – A, which can be downloaded by clicking here.
  3. Read and annotate the ☐ state’s scoring explanation for Anchor Level 6A, which immediately follows the model paper itself.
  4. Repeat Steps 2-3 with ☐ Anchor Paper – Part 2 – Level 6 – B and the ☐ state’s scoring explanation, both of which can be downloaded by clicking here.

☐ Grammar as Rhetoric and Style

  1. Identify ☐ examples of the GARAS lessons in your own essay by annotating and analyzing the effect of any or all of the following:
  2. Identify ☐ examples of grammar as rhetoric and style in either of the anchor papers (6A or 6B) by annotating and analyzing the effect of any or all of the following:

☐ Complete the Metacognition

  1. Outline a ☐ metacognitive analysis of your own essay, using details from the rubric for Part 2, the two anchor papers, your understanding of the four GARAS exercises, and the state’s scoring explanation for both anchor papers.
  2. Work with peers and your teachers to develop that metacognitive outline into a ☐ response that explores your strengths and weaknesses on this type of essay.
☐ Part 1: August ’16

Note: You will complete Part 1 of the Aug. ’16 exam when you finish Part 1 and Part 2 of the Aug. ’14 exam. Depending on how long the Aug. ’14 exam takes and your own needs, you may skip Part 1 of the Aug. ’16 exam to practice Part 2.

This is the multiple-choice section of the August ’16 ELA Regents Exam. There are three passages and 24 multiple-choice questions. We will complete this practice on an individual basis or if it is otherwise necessary for us to complete it. Here is the section in full, followed by the required steps you must take (which are identical to the steps for Part 1 of the August ’14 exam):

 

☐ Practice the Multiple-Choice

  1. Read and annotate ☐ Passage A.
  2. Answer the multiple-choice questions for ☐ Passage A, circling your answer in the exam packet.
  3. Repeat Steps 1-2 for ☐ Passage B and ☐ Passage C.
  4. Enter your answers for all 24 questions in the Google Form below.

☐ Complete the Google Form

☐ Complete the Metacognition

  1. Get the correct answers for all 24 questions from the Google Form.
  2. For ☐ Passage A, write a metacognitive breakdown of your work, including both correct and incorrect answers.
  3. Work with peers and your teachers to ☐ develop that metacognitive breakdown into an understanding of your strengths and weaknesses on this type of passage.
  4. Repeat Step 2-3 for ☐ Passage B and ☐ Passage C.
☐ Part 2: August ’16

Note: You will complete Part 2 of the Aug. ’16 exam when you finish Part 1 and Part 2 of the Aug. ’14 exam. Depending on how long the Aug. ’14 exam takes and your own needs, you may skip directly to this essay practice.

This is the source-based argument prompt from the August ’16 ELA Regents Exam. Here is the section in full, followed by the required steps you must take:

 

☐ Practice the Source-Based Essay

  1. Read and annotate the ☐ Directions, ☐ Topic, ☐ Task, and ☐ Guidelines.
  2. Read and annotate each of the four sources: ☐ Text 1, ☐ Text 2, ☐ Text 3, and ☐ Text 4.
  3. Write an ☐ essay response to this prompt in the provided Regents booklet.

☐ Copy the Exemplar Essay

  1. Read and annotate the ☐ rubric for Part 2, which can be downloaded by clicking here.
  2. Copy by hand the entirety of ☐ Anchor Paper – Part 2 – Level 6 – A, which can be downloaded by clicking here.
  3. Read and annotate the ☐ state’s scoring explanation for Anchor Level 6A, which immediately follows the model paper itself.
  4. Repeat Steps 2-3 with ☐ Anchor Paper – Part 2 – Level 6 – B and the ☐ state’s scoring explanation, both of which can be downloaded by clicking here.
  1. Identify ☐ examples of the GARAS lessons in your own essay by annotating and analyzing the effect of any or all of the following:
  2. Identify ☐ examples of grammar as rhetoric and style in either of the anchor papers (6A or 6B) by annotating and analyzing the effect of any or all of the following:

☐ Complete the Metacognition

  1. Outline a ☐ metacognitive analysis of your own essay, using details from the rubric for Part 2, the two anchor papers, your understanding of the four GARAS exercises, and the state’s scoring explanation for both anchor papers.
  2. Work with peers and your teachers to develop that metacognitive outline into a ☐ response that explores your strengths and weaknesses on this type of essay

Pre-AP Work: AP11 Summer Reading

Note: This is the required summer reading for students moving into AP11 next year. If you are not taking AP English Language and Composition as a junior, you can ignore this part of the post entirely.

The Reading

The summer reading for AP11 is taken from the beginning of a college-level textbook on reading, writing, and rhetoric. This textbook, The Language of Composition, gives the background necessary for the work we’ll do next year.

Each of the first four chapters has been scanned and archived below on the BHS server. You can only access these chapters through your Brewster account, just like you can only access hard copies of the textbook in our classroom. Photocopies of these chapters will be made available, and you can sign out a copy of the textbook for a few days at a time. If you’d like your own copy, here is the link to buy it on Amazon.

Note: The glossary is also being included this year.

The Thinking and Writing

As you read, take notes. Make observations. Connect what you learn to yourself and your environment as often and as authentically as possible. The terms you will encounter are important, but always less important than the ideas. To quote another introduction to rhetoric:

Don’t be scared of the intimidating detail suggested by the odd Greek and Latin terms. After all, you can enjoy the simple beauty of a birch tree without knowing it is Betula alba and make use of the shade of a weeping willow without knowing it is in fact Salix babylonica. The same is possible with rhetoric. The names aid categorization and are more or less conventional, but I encourage you to get past the sesquipedalian labels and observe the examples and the sample criticism (rhetoric in practice). It is beyond the definitions that the power of rhetoric is made apparent.

That is from the Forest of Rhetoric, a site that could teach you nearly as much as The Language of Composition, if you allowed yourself to spend some time studying its many branches. You could also learn nearly as much by reading the excellent Thank You for Arguing, by Jay Heinrichs, which is on Amazon here. Heinrichs’ book used to be the required AP summer reading. There are certainly many other introductions out there.

The point of that last paragraph is that the basics of rhetoric and argument and logic are timeless. These are the bones of discourse and understanding in life. You never stop learning them, but you need some sort of substructure before you can experiment, build, and iterate, which are the goals of the Humanities makerspace in Room 210.

As always, I’m your expert and mentor, so you should ask questions and seek advice as you get going. You’ll notice that you have nothing due — no journals, no impending tests, no deadlines. The most I will ask you to do is to register for the course through Google Classroom. The work is due, in the sense that anything is due, on the first day of school, but the work will continue through the last day. Everything matters, not just those soritical moments of summative assessment.

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The End of The Long Walk

  By All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

Makerspace Calendar

Refer to this calendar for the overall structure of the last month:

We will spend most of our time before the end of school making things. The course expectations for focus and productivity haven’t changed, but you will have more autonomy. Note that any end-of-year test prep or individual GAP improvements will take precedence over unstructured makerspace activity. It’s not exactly a feast-or-famine framework, but it’s similar.

Pareto Projects

Review the expectations for the Pareto Project, including the last updates for juniors or sophomores, and then complete the following Google Form:

Note that the last question on the form requires you to write at least 1500 characters. This is a substantial amount of analysis, and it should be taken seriously. You are strongly encouraged to write your response separately, because Forms does not save in-progress work. The form will not accept anything less than 1500 characters. There is a visual approximation of what that looks like embedded in the form itself.

You can use Monday’s class period to work on this form and the response required at the end of it.

Exams

Refer to the following calendar for the schedule for final and Regents exams in all subjects:

RE10 Specifics

Sophomores will spend the next month prepping as necessary for their final exam, which has two components:

  1. A reading passage with multiple-choice questions, modeled after the passages on Part 1 of the Regents Examination in English Language Arts
  2. A timed essay modeled after Part 2 of the Regents Examination in English Language Arts

For the multiple-choice practice, we will use old Regents Exams, Google Forms, and metacognition. For the timed essay, we will use old exam prompts, metacognition, and the Grammar as Rhetoric and Style work you’ve just completed.

We will begin our prep on Monday. A separate instructional post will be uploaded and photocopied then with digital archives of all the materials you’ll receive in class. We’ll review the protocol then, so if you’re reading this before class, all you need to prepare for is a shift to much more separate and individualized work — no groups, and computers and devices only if they aren’t a distraction.

AP11 + RE11 Specifics

All juniors must take the Regents Examination in English Language Arts. You have already been given access to every resource you need to prepare for it, and we will use whatever class time you require to practice and review. Refer to this post for all the required information:

Printed copies of every single element in that post will be available in our classroom for the rest of the year. If you are an AP student, start the period on Monday by emptying your test-prep folder of all AP materials. Then use Google Classroom to organize yourself by deadline. RE11 students can focus on the Pareto update and any other instructional posts.

The final exam for juniors is a more complicated subject. Read the following paragraphs carefully.

If you are in danger of failing English for the year, then you are required to take a separate final exam. This exam will be an essay-driven assessment designed to give you, if you are in danger of failing for the year, an opportunity to pass. You will be informed if this applies to you after Q4B GAP scores are determined on May 19.

If you are required to take a separate final exam in English, your final average will be determined by five scores, including that final exam score. The ELA Regents Exam does not count as part of your GPA, regardless of your overall average.

If you are not in danger of failing English for the year, you will not be asked to take a separate final exam.Your final average will be determined by your four quarterly grades only.

If you have questions about any of this, ask those questions below or in the comment section of the individual course posts, where I can clarify for everyone or forward things along to the folks who make these decisions.

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GAP Q4A: Pillars of Salt

  By All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

I’ve kept your GAP Q4A scores and this feedback until this morning to sidestep the AP English Language Exam, which is taking place as this post goes live. After plague symptoms swept through my house last week, delaying grade abatement by four or five days, I determined that we were too close to AP exams to release scores. It would have created distraction and added frustration at a time when those 70 students could not afford either.

I predict some frustration because of the significant discrepancy between self-reported GAP scores and the actual body of work for the 4A frame. Many of you indicated a profile that is not supported by the evidence. It is often frustrating to be called out on that sort of mistake, but the most important principle here is accuracy.

As always, I did this clinically. The titular irony1 is that none of this is “salty,” as you might say. You have a static post with all the most recent materials for grade abatement — from way back in February — and you should be making your way through an instructional post on feedback that revisits what is expected of you day by day. There’s some intentional warmth and humor in that last post, and it’s otherwise a straightforward deconstruction of how to learn successfully. Even the disappointment is deliberate and clinical, in the same way that your car’s engine light doesn’t flash on to be rude. The light means only that something isn’t working.

Part of this post’s clinical deconstruction is a reminder that our class period is as important as anything else. This fact has not changed since the first day of school. Neither has the expectation that you archive evidence for virtually every formal assignment through Google Classroom, or else that you arrange a clear and explicit alternative. GAP work isn’t guesswork, and if you must constantly justify a lack of focus or a lack of evidence, that itself is evidence of a problem.

The other problem, as always, is the Dunning-Kruger reasoning that one is exempt from in-class requirements and/or exempt from creating written evidence of learning. You have really intricate guides and breakdowns for all this, but it’s just as often Occam’s razor: The “consistent and reliable” language in the profile of a GAP 6 requires consistent evidence and a reliable in-class focus.

So take a look at what you didn’t hand in on Google classroom. Take honest account of how focused you are in class. If you feel that the final GAP score is still incorrect, pull up the evidence and reflective thinking you submitted alongside the GAP 4A form. Was there any? If not, but you have evidence, the question is obvious: Where was it when it was required? That’s the idea of a body of evidence, a “rhinoceros” test, and a thorough self-reporting process. I work with what you give me.

That’s the other thing, though, and the more important one: Anytime it ends up being about me, not you and your learning, we need to refocus on what the course provides you. Try to take advantage of this opportunity. You’ll always have another turn in a Skinner box.

Carrots and Sticks

Now for some feedback that you should imagine is being read through an emotionless text-to-speech program:

First, if you believe that we need to meet about evidence and profiles, let me know. We’ll determine together if you’re right, and we’ll fold any conferences into the current collective refocus on radial and proxy feedback.

By that same logic, those of you doing good work need to work harder on helping your peers. You should broaden your circle of influence before the end of the year. As your ability to choose what to do opens up, you should revisit Google+ as a means of collaboration, and I would like to test Google Groups, too.

All of you should focus on each choice, each day. Make the best choice for learning. If you’re in doubt, enlist peers to help you make the best choice, or ask me for some guidance.

AP students who do not alter alter poor decision-making tendencies will see those GAP scores drop quickly. Post-exam work is more important to us, actually, and we fight the inevitable post-exam letdown through increased student choice. I’m not going to intervene to tell you that the way you’re spending a class period is unacceptable, though, or that you ought to hand in evidence of your work, except in the idle way I might comment on the weather we’re having.

If you’re an AP student who is not advocating and accounting for yourself, that’s fine — in that it’s a bad decision, and one that will inculcate self-defeating traits in you, and one that will absolutely and inexorably and ultimately hurt you; it’s not, however, a decision that will be wrestled away from you. Your choice to challenge yourself by taking an AP course also gives you the freedom to fail.

RE11 and RE10 students who don’t find a new gear and a new focus immediately will be isolated in class and required to attend study sessions during a free period, lunch, or after-school session, which means I’ll coordinate with your parents or guardians and Guidance to get you the help that you need. That probably means focused Regents Exam or final exam prep, respectively, but it could easily be a session on assiduousness, amenability, self-awareness, collegiality, or any of the other meaningful skills and traits we use to determine GAP scores.

You’re also looking at the likely end of student-choice seating in P4, P5, and P9. Some groups will be allowed to stay together, and probation is a possibility for a few others. Most of you would benefit immediately from the lack of distraction, however, and from an explicit directive to focus and get work done. That costs you choice in your learning, and it prevents in-class collaboration, but it buys us the time to get you the help that you need.

As always, you are encouraged to ask questions about this feedback and its application below. Use that space. You are not Lot’s wife, running from destruction and certain to die if you look back. You should look back. The more you reflect, the easier it is to move forward.

  1. The salt in the post title, which refers to saltiness as much as Lot’s poor wife. I actually like “salty” as slang; its origins are interesting, at least. The problem is that it treats criticism and emotion as an overreaction. It is sometimes appropriate to be disappointed or frustrated. ↩

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Mongering and Congeries

  By Space Explainers, Triage

Photobombing

This post is a snapshot of the teaching and learning that takes place in Room 210 in Brewster High School. The picture was taken on May 3, 2017, and it’s one of those snapshots where you eventually notice that someone has photobombed it:

In this case, I like to think that the people are photobombing the turtle, not the other way around.

The day of this writing is a Wednesday. I’m at work today. Yesterday, I was out, because my entire family was diagnosed with strep throat and pinkeye1. For four days last week, I was in North Salem for a conference, which is why I’ve dragged myself back to work today — that’s too long way from the classroom, regardless of how I feel or how I teach.

The result of all this illness and conferencing is that students in Room 210 have only seen me once in person since Monday, April 24. We are only a few days away from the AP exam and a month from the Regents , and I can’t force my voice above a whisper, if “whisper” means “husky frog that’s been screaming all night.” There’s also what you might imagine is acute exhaustion, not just from being sick myself, but from helping a three-year-old and a thirteen-month-old deal with being sick2.

Five years ago, this situation would have put me in such a heightened state of anxiety that I’d have probably been wheeled out of here3. Now? Well, now we can talk about how the course is built for this. It’s built to continue during a planned three-day absence for a conference. It’s built for unexpected catastrophes, like a sick household, and expected ones, like the stress of AP week. It doesn’t matter if I can shout or barely speak: The entire course has been redesigned from nuts to bolts so that we learn interstitially, when we can and when we need to.

Nowhere is that paradigm shift more evident — and therefore more in need of the occasional spotlight — than in how feedback works. Assessment and feedback are the backbone of instruction; when they no longer resemble traditional assessment and feedback, our time is never wasted when we talk about that change.

But let’s talk about rumors first.

Rumor-Mongering

Rumors are an interesting species of information, especially in a high school. When I was first hired to teach in Brewster, for instance, the rumor was that I’d previously had a career as an underground rapper and DJ. I’ve never determined how that rumor started, just that it persisted for years4.

Other rumors are less hilarious. As I began changing the way I teach, the first rumor to take root was that I don’t teach books. I remember a colleague saying to me one day, as if remarking that rain makes one wet, “You don’t like books, right?” I think I was too perplexed to answer, which she might have taken as agreement. “Yes, of course — this rain is making us wet!”

As part of a focus on modeling writing and flipping instruction, I’ve written about my love of literature and the importance of teaching it. I still show this video on the power of literature as part of different units on empathy. And I also still, you know, teach literature, in the sense that it is assigned and expected of students:

Reading the Room

That’s the intricate framework for a unit about reading 1984, among other canonical works. Juniors ought to recognize it, since it’s taught to some extent every year. It includes literature and students reading literature, as near as I can tell.

The rumor that I don’t assign/teach/like literature is easy to trace, though, which is important. I teach Paul Graham’s “Age of the Essay,” and I make no secret of how much I agree with his conclusions. I also agree with John Holt’s idea of what makes children hate reading. I don’t think their perspectives negate the teaching of literature, but they are complex and uncomfortable ideas that challenge long-held assumptions about English Language Arts. They force us to talk about resonance5 and efficacy and technology and neuroplasticity, among many other elements. It’s far simpler to build a straw man — or an English kind of Scotsman — than to grapple with, e.g., Graham’s logic, which forced me many years ago to realize that a syllabus in the Humanities might need to look different.

(It might also be worth a moment’s consideration that the straw man built from my desire to teach literature differently doesn’t really match up with, you know, the guy who was interviewed in Harper’s.)

The Hydra

A much trickier rumor, and the impetus for this post, is that I don’t give students feedback on their writing. That one pops up every so often, especially during periods of high student stress, and especially if I am absent for any length of time6. Using an assessment system like grade abatement dislocates a lot of student expectations, too, But one of the biggest reasons that this feedback rumor rears its head again and again, like history’s least-informed hydra, is that it’s true. Sort of.

Over the past 5-6 years, I’ve torn down and rebuilt the way I give feedback, using the same iterative framework I use for everything else in the classroom. It’s makerspace thinking, which is outlined in the syllabus I linked to before, and which is exactly what I ask students to do. Instead of trying to make the old system faster or more efficient, I started thinking about new systems. I began looking at how feedback works in real-world situations. I tested ideas, learned from their failures, and ended up with this:

View at Medium.com

That post, as it explores the different facets of the system of feedback here in Room 210, seems to dispel the rumor that I don’t give feedback. The problem is that it does this by questioning the very nature of feedback, including how a classroom is structured and where the onus for learning rests. So it’s complicated. It takes time to understand. Reading all of the ramiform hyperlinks alone would require more time and attention than most of spend on anything online, even when it’s demanded of us, and that’s well before we look at other connected and helpful instructional posts.

Still, Sisyphus is our mascot for a reason. Here are other connected and helpful instructional posts about feedback:

(1) Directional Discomfort | The “open hand” section is the key, as it details the more ameliorative aspect of the feedback system. The whole post is itself an example of feedback, too, and it’s actually an archive of performative feedback — that very teacher-centric, front-of-the-classroom, dark-clouds-gathering kind of feedback that I used to give. That stuff, like most traditional feedback, is more about the teacher than the student. It has its place, but I don’t think that place is at the center of the learning environment.

(2) The Enigma of Grade Abatement | One of many feedback posts — part and parcel of the course, to paraphrase Emerson7 — that concerns itself with the end of a grade-abated period of study. This one talks explicitly about how feedback works, what kind of agency students have in their learning, and how transparent the system tries to be.

(3) Molecular Learning | An extended analogy used to introduce the philosophy of the course (and to teach extended analogies by modeling one). That philosophy is centered on how an expert cook/writer/learner might differentiate instruction for students of differing abilities and interests. It also argues, like most everything I write for students, that learning is about flexibility and advocacy and taking risks.

(4) “Observe, question, explore, reflect.” | This offers a deeper look at how the feedback process functions during a “real” assignment, but the reason to read it is the essay on preschool crafts embedded early on. Dahl articulates why we should shift feedback away from product toward process, because it forces us to examine the purpose of the work. Are we after a perfect essay, made perfect through rigorous dissection and revision and resubmission? Do we want to act as editors8 who strip away all the authenticity of the writing until it’s just about what we think? Or are we after a process that can travel with a student?

(5) Tilting at Windmills | The TL;DR is the most important part, because it mentions feedback in two of the three basic components of successful learning. Work ethic is the first component, but the other two are about interacting with new forms of feedback and instruction, working with peers, and “goal-oriented feedback looping with the teacher.” In other words, feedback only works when it is a circuit. Break the circuit (e.g., by never talking to the teacher or reading instructional posts like this one), and the feedback dies — just like it would if the student didn’t read comments on an essay or zoned out during a lecture. The major difference in this course? The student starts the loop, not the teacher.

There are many, many more examples of developing and deepening these ideas, and for every generalized post (like this looped work on organization and self-awareness), there are dozens of examples of proxy, radial, and individual feedback during the class period itself — a period identified early and often as more important than any other part of the feedback loop. The interstitial stuff was created as part of an “anywhere, anytime” learning environment, but the idea of interstitial learning means that everything is feedback, or at least is intended to be feedback.

An Example

AP exam prep began in January with a front-loaded look at exams and our first practice essay. Three months later, students began their individual preparations through this final, organizing post. Part of that post and its in-class counterpart was feedback on multiple-choice data, including analysis of various patterns in the AP sections, and a drill-down discussion into the resources provided to each student for their last few weeks of interstitial prep.

That’s a lot of looped feedback and student-centered learning. It took a long time to stagger it out to students without overwhelming them, too. And it’s why I was able to dedicate an entire period on Wednesday, May 3, to one student and one student only. Her 30+ peers were left to their own devices, and after an initial conversation about what to work on, she was given feedback on a rhetorical analysis essay from 8:50 until 9:15. To continue the snapshot of Room 210:

She and I sat at a desk with her response to Question 2 of the practice AP exam we are studying. In front of us, we had her metacognitive notes on the writing process, the samples provided by the College Board, and my notes. We had other resources, including the many guides prepared for each section of the exam (here’s the one for that prompt), up on the computer screen next to us.

And then we talked. I marked up the essay, offering suggestions on universal elements like approach and style, and more specific feedback on blending quotations and arranging ideas through transitions of logic. The student took notes, asked questions, and clarified her next steps.

Certainly every student would gain something from just such a conference. Not many advocate for themselves as that student did, but that’s not surprising; what is surprising, at least to me, is that I would not want them all to advocate like that. Replacing handwritten commentary with conferences is functionally no different in terms of teacher-centered learning. There is a better way.

Because this student left our meeting ready to teach. She knows that her GAP score depends on her ability to transfer knowledge, to embrace the Protégé Effect, and to be collaborative and metacognitive; shifting the burden of feedback boosts her final score, boosts her understanding, improves her eventual performance on whatever high-stakes game waits for her, and boosts the understanding of her peers. If that instructional essay on feedback is the blueprint for what we do, this student’s efforts on May 3 are the product: Radial and proxy feedback that helps the individual and the group. Anything else is a ramshackle attempt to do the old thing more effectively or efficiently.

In the Wind

This is a lot to take in, sure. It’s a paradigm shift. If it didn’t require a lot of study and research and effort to understand, it would just be another flashy and ultimately meaningless attempt at “reform,” and our demand for simplicity borders on cynicism. Catchphrases and soundbites and aphorisms actively prevent education from evolving, in fact; it’s a complex system, and it takes complex thinking to fix it. Perseverating about “grit” and “creativity” and how students are staring at their iPads all day isn’t helping them to learn better, and neither is giving feedback exactly like teachers did in 1987.

What ought to stand out clearly, if you’ve made it this far, is the constant layering of meaning. You should see an ongoing, evolving conversation about feedback that is, itself, often a part of feedback. Everything is connected, and the mechanisms are all transparent; therefore, if you invest in the system, you’ll understand it, which is why there are so many students reading this right now and thinking, “This doesn’t apply to me,” without an ounce of Dunning-Kruger denial. Their understanding took hard work, and they know it.

Of course, the folks who need the information in this post often don’t read these posts, or don’t read them all that well. They’ll pick up on the occasional frustration or sarcasm9 and skip right over the good stuff. And that was a serious flaw — I knew I was preaching to the choir, but I kept singing like I wanted to burst some alveoli — until I started printing posts, making photocopies, distributing paper, and teaching the lesson in small groups. We’ve done that, I’d guess, 25 or 30 times this year? We’ll do it again with this one, forcing even the most reticent readers to grapple with this kind of flipped lecture. And that’s during a year when we had every intention of going paperless.

Students receive feedback, is the point. They create their own, too, which requires the kind of uncomfortable metacognition I invite everyone reading this to do — and that means everybody. I don’t know anyone, myself included, who wouldn’t benefit from looking with clear but sympathetic eyes at the person in the mirror. I welcome the feedback that comes from that introspection. I welcome all feedback, in fact, because that’s the maker mentality: to collaborate and innovate and problem-solve together.

There’s just one thing to keep in mind: You are entitled, as Harlan Ellison once said, only to an informed opinion. That’s an opinion informed by research and discussion and knowledge and perspective. You are entitled to that opinion. Opinions that are uninformed or misinformed or drawn from an echo chamber that just repeats everything you already believe? You’re not entitled to that. You can have one of those uninformed opinions, sure, but it has about as much worth, to paraphrase Ellison again, as a bit of methane in the wind.

  1. It was also my birthday, which I mention in order to help you imagine the scene. Candles are lit, the children are singing, but everyone sounds like they’ve been smoking for 50 years and looks roughly like a zombie that’s been through a 12-round fight. ↩

  2. It’s the existential piece that really gets to them. ↩

  3. This quite literally happened once. It’s amazing the perspective you develop while elevated on a stretcher. ↩

  4. I was never challenged to a rap battle, though. It feels like a missed teaching opportunity. Or it would, if I had actually been an underground rapper and DJ. Who can know such things? ↩

  5. Including Northrop Frye’s definition of it, which really ought to inform every so-called “assured experience” we give in literature. The canon can’t be unassailable, but it exists for a reason; and having an open mind about it isn’t some kind of pedagogical blasphemy. ↩

  6. Another snapshot: I missed an entire week one year because of severe recurrent corneal erosion, which means my cornea split in half. I couldn’t see for a week or so, and that recurred three or four times, which meant a system without this new kind of feedback would have collapsed completely. ↩

  7. Like using Edwards’ “Sinners” to talk about disappointment, using Emerson is a transparent attempt to model what reading and allusive thinking looks like, not just what it theoretically might look like if students were more like literature professors. In that same essay, Emerson wrote that “[t]he greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.” So I use it. ↩

  8. I had a colleague once say, “I missed my calling as a copyeditor,” and that’s exactly it: We develop the skills we need, and if we treat student writing as an artifact to be cleaned up and presented, we become copyeditors, not mentors. ↩

  9. Which is being left in as another transparent kind of teaching-by-doing. Sarcasm has its place, and that place is probably when the writer has to explain something he’s explained dozens of times already to a group that has no business remaining ignorant. It’s like watching someone try to force a vinyl record into a CD player. That calls for some sarcasm. ↩

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Autodidacticism vs. Autodefenestration

  By AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017)

As of tonight, you will have finished your first full foray into Section I of the AP Exam. I’ll sort those data on my end; you will spend the next four days continuing to produce data, starting with the second free-response essay. Budget 10-15 minutes per night to complete the succinct self-analysis outlined today.

Oh, and you should know that I’m away at a conference for the rest of the week. If you need my help, use one of the interstitial mechanisms available to you — email, Classroom, Google+, or this site. (The comment section might be dusty, but it still works.) Remember that a post like this is quite literally me teaching you. Go slowly, take notes, ask questions, etc. Bad habits will begin to do real damage at this point.

The Final Free-Response Essay

We practiced the general argument essay on this exam back when you were first introduced to the AP, which is a moment worth revisiting:

Advanced Placement Ownership

There is a lot of information in that post. It’s possible that you didn’t internalize all of it when you first read it, but we’ll get back to that in a moment. For now, I bring it up to show you that you’ve written a timed general argument as well as the synthesis essay from the 2016 exam. Now you have only one essay left to practice in this interminable spiral: the rhetorical analysis response.

We’ve saved this essay for now for a few reasons. It’s the most test-specific of the writing you’ll do, which makes it relatively useless to you after May 10; Section I of the exam helps to build your ability to read passages and deconstruct them quickly; it’s the quickest essay to write, for most students; and most importantly, it’s the kind of writing you’ve practiced most often this year, although we call it emulation-through-analysis or ETA work. In all your English classes, in fact, rhetorical (or literary) analysis has been what you’ve practiced most often. The rhythms of it are familiar to you, and the multiple-choice work you’ve finished should have you in the right frame of mind for this specific version.

To prepare for this part of the exam, you should

  1. read this preparatory guide (or one like it);
  2. take 40 minutes to write your own response to the 2016 FR2 prompt; and then
  3. analyze the College Board’s scoring guide and sample responses.

That means that your assignment, starting on April 25, is to write a response to the rhetorical analysis prompt from the 2016 practice exam. By the time you finish, there will be a follow-up assignment related to the scoring guides and exemplars. Your real focus, once you’ve finished the last sentence of that response, is this:

An Autodidactic Sprint

When that Cthulhu-inspired post was given to you on January 31, it kicked off the second semester’s growing focus on the AP Exam. Diligent students will have noticed that we’ve been increasing the speed and frequency of our practice, with plenty of explanations and guides and Lovecraftian metaphors thrown in along the way.

Writing the rhetorical analysis gives you all the data you need to set your own schedule for the next two weeks. Two days ago, you were also given the final resources:

Rabbit and Loopholes

That post is clear enough, but I’ll reiterate its two most important links:

These folders have also been placed at the top of the right menu on this site and on the “About” page of Google Classroom. Note: The links are locked to Brewster accounts, which means you’ll need to sign into Google to access them. The explanation for that is with Alice in the post from April 23.

You should already be delving into those folders, because you should already have read the post asking you to do that. Regardless, those are your resources for the last two weeks before the exam.

In the “Practice” folder, you’ll find complete exams from 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016, with 2016 materials carefully separated out and labeled; additionally, you’ll find practice free-response prompts for each type of question from 2007-2014. (I haven’t updated those yet with the essays from 2015 and 2016, because there’s no need.)

In the “Guides” folder, you’ll find the exam overview I compiled for you, plus separate guides I wrote for each of the free-response questions. The subfolder labeled “Language of Composition (Textbook)” contains, as you might guess, helpful excerpts from the AP textbook we’ve used before. More on that folder in a moment.

The idea here is obvious, but bear with me: You have everything you need to practice what you need to practice before May 10, and that makes the lessons and feedback loops and discussions and so on your call. All I will do is serve as the expert on the skills, traits, and knowledge required.

My only blanket suggestion is that you read the guides carefully, including the excerpts scanned in the textbook folder. Reading through the textbook — and you’ve already seen a lot of what’s in there — is the most straightforward way to set yourself up to work with me and your peers next week, when the pace picks up even more.

One more note: Photocopies of a lot of this stuff will be available starting on April 25. Next to my desk, you’ll find excerpts from The Language of Composition, although I should tell you that I scanned my copy, which is more recent than those paper copies. Check above the surge protector. On the bookshelf by the door, you’ll find any remaining copies of our 2016 practice. I’ve asked one of your peers to pick up copies of a few of the multiple-choice sections from downstairs, too, and she will put those somewhere visible.

Now let’s go over your week again, assuming that you’re caught up through tonight’s Section I work:

  1. Write your rhetorical analysis response.
  2. Go through the Google Drive exam folders.
  3. Start your individual exam prep.

Keep up with the nightly self-analysis, too, and expect to spend part of Friday’s period completing a GAP report for the first triptych panel of Q4. I’ll post any other information, updates, and instruction here and on Google Classroom. Ask questions! I will do my best to get back to you as quickly as I can, and I’d like to see if we can test the interstitial capabilities of our course over the next four days.

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Regents Prep: A Day’s Wait

  By English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

In an effort to limit the amount of class time dedicated to explicit Regents Exam prep, we’re going to finish writing the practice exam this week. You should already have Part 1 and Part 2 in your folders. By Friday, finish Part 3, recording your response in the same essay booklet you used for Part 2. If you haven’t written Part 2 yet, do that, too. Printed copies of everything you need are available in our classroom, most likely on the bookshelves by the door.

Part 3: Text-Analysis Response

Part 3 of the exam is an abbreviated kind of analysis. The directions are clear enough, so you should be able to build the necessary writing out of the task and guidelines provided by the state. For reference, here are those expectations, which are the same on each exam:

Your Task: Closely read the text provided on pages 19 through 21 and write a well-developed, text-based response of two to three paragraphs. In your response, identify a central idea in the text and analyze how the author’s use of one writing strategy (literary element or literary technique or rhetorical device) develops this central idea. Use strong and thorough evidence from the text to support your analysis. Do not simply summarize the text. You may use the margins to take notes as you read and scrap paper to plan your response. Write your response in the spaces provided on pages 7 through 9 of your essay booklet.

Guidelines:

Be sure to:
• Identify a central idea in the text
• Analyze how the author’s use of one writing strategy (literary element or literary technique or rhetorical device) develops this central idea. Examples include: characterization, conflict, denotation/connotation, metaphor, simile, irony, language use, point-of-view, setting, structure, symbolism, theme, tone, etc.
• Use strong and thorough evidence from the text to support your analysi
• Organize your ideas in a cohesive and coherent manner
• Maintain a formal style of writing
• Follow the conventions of standard written English

Write your response in the appropriate section of the essay booklet. You should eventually have a booklet with Part 2 and Part 3 in it; if you need to stitch this together by separating and stapling pages, be sure to do that. Finish Part 3 by Friday. You’ll see why in a moment.

Assignment: Transcription and Revision

Your next assignment, due Monday the 1st, is to type both responses from this practice Regents. You can edit the text as you go or keep it as-is. If you make edits and revisions, you will be able to account for those when you complete the required metacognition and reflection next week; if you copy your writing verbatim, you will be able to talk about possible revisions when you delve into the scoring guides next week.

Typing this handwritten work invites you to grapple with your choices in a different way from our usual metacognitive approach. That will benefit our test prep, and it also creates critical evidence for GAP scoring. My intention is to see if Hunter S. Thompson’s idea about copying writing down works on ourselves. If it doesn’t, we might try typing up the exemplar essays.

Regardless, you are being asked to complete two separate tasks by Monday:

  1. Type up your handwritten essay response for Part 2 of the practice exam.
  2. Type up your handwritten analysis response for Part 3 of the practice exam.

Attach those typed versions to the appropriate Google Classroom assignment. I suggest making a copy of them, first, so that you keep one for the metacognitive work we’ll be doing next week.

Ask any clarifying questions about this below.